Analysts and investors have long trumpeted ‘climate-proof’ US communities, but recent disasters show the need for a different way of thinking
A few years ago, while visiting a tiny village, I toured a grand old community hall scheduled to be demolished after a historic flood. Across the street, a phantom row of eight buildings had already come down. Next to go was this beloved structure, built with local lumber by the craftsman grandfathers of the people who still lived there. One of the two local officials escorting me had been married here, she told me. There was a plan to repurpose the six soaring arches, the other official said, gazing towards the ceiling. “The other part of it, knocking the rest of it down … ,” he trailed off, emotionally. “I won’t be in town to see that.”
This village isn’t located on the rapidly eroding Gulf coast, or any coast. It isn’t on the edge of a drought-stricken wildland. It isn’t anywhere typically named as existentially threatened due to the impacts of climate change. Forever altered by floods, the village of Rock Springs, in my home state of Wisconsin, is instead located smack in the middle of what’s often been called a “climate haven”.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
02/26/2025 - 08:00
02/26/2025 - 07:00
Workers at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fear crackdown will have global fallout
The Trump administration has set its sights on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the US’s pre-eminent climate research agency, with significant cuts and a political crackdown on climate science. As Trump takes aim at the agency, the impact is likely to be felt across the US and around the world.
Noaa provides essential resources to the public and has helped make the US a scientific leader internationally. Operating 18 satellites and 15 research and survey ships, the agency’s scientists, engineers and policy experts issue forecasts relied on by aviation, agriculture and fishing industries; ocean floor mapping depended upon for shipping; advises on species protection, and increasingly precise and accurate modeling on what to expect as climate crisis unfolds.
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02/26/2025 - 06:00
Advocacy groups are better prepared than the first term for legal challenges – but will the administration obey rulings?
Amid spending freezes and policy rollbacks from Donald Trump, environmental advocacy groups are gearing up for a long series of legal showdowns with the administration.
The experience of suing Trump during his first term has left the movement better prepared, but the court battles will still be daunting, with the administration appearing to test the nation’s legal boundaries in an effort to consolidate power under the executive branch.
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02/26/2025 - 06:00
It’s time to rethink how climate action succeeds. The key is to acknowledge that it’s never the sole force driving political decisions
We are witnessing the most devastating climate disasters on record: wildfires ravaging Los Angeles, deadly floods in North Carolina, and global temperature records shattered month after month. We have officially surpassed 1.5C of warming, a critical threshold scientists have long warned against. At the same time, the US is scaling back policies, freezing critical programs and shifting priorities away from climate action.
But now isn’t the time to give up on climate action. Instead, it is high time to rethink how it succeeds.
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02/26/2025 - 05:27
Fossil fuel firm will cut more than $5bn from low-carbon investment plan in ‘fundamental reset’
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BP is dropping green goals, ramping up oil and gas production and slashing spending on low-carbon energy as part of a fundamental reset of the troubled company.
The FTSE 100 fossil fuel company has promised shareholders it will increase its target for oil and gas production by 2030 to the equivalent of about 2.4m barrels a day – about 60% higher than the figure in its net zero plan set out five years ago.
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02/26/2025 - 01:00
Thousands of seafarers are left on board their vessels in foreign waters, unpaid, with scant supplies – and no way of getting home
When Vihaan* set off from his home in Tamil Nadu, south India, to work on a vessel crossing the Bay of Bengal into neighbouring Bangladesh, he told his family he would be gone a few months. After delivering his cargo of stone to Bangladesh’s Kutubdia Island, the marine engineer was due to head home in March 2024 to disembark at Thoothukudi port, India.
But that month, the rusting tug, the Navimar 3, which was being operated by Middle East Marine (MEM), was detained by the authorities in Bangladesh due to unpaid fees. For almost a year, Vihaan has become a virtual prisoner on board, he says, forced to work without pay to keep the vessel safe, amid strong currents where it is anchored off the island in the cyclone-prone bay. His passport and certification documents are being held by a local agent for the Dubai-based company. With no means of getting home, no visa to disembark and without supplies, he has to rely on food and water from charities and unions.
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02/25/2025 - 21:06
Boat tour captures video of Northern right whale dolphins, Pacific white-sided dolphins and light grey baby calves
More than 2,000 dolphins gathered off the California coast to form a “superpod”, gliding and breaching the clear, aquamarine waters off Monterey Bay.
The superpod included Northern right whale dolphins and Pacific white-sided dolphins, as well as light grey baby calves. Evan Brodsky, a captain and videographer with the private boat tour company Monterey Bay Whale Watch, captured a video of the dolphins, and his company shared it on Facebook, calling the spectacle “mind-blowing”.
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02/25/2025 - 19:01
Volklec aims to start making batteries at part-government-funded site near Coventry before building its own factory
A startup has said it has learned from Britain’s faltering attempts to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles, as it signed a deal to license technology from an established Chinese firm.
Coventry-based Volklec plans to manufacture batteries for cars, boats, construction vehicles and aircraft using technology from China’s Far East Battery (FEB), a maker of batteries mainly for electric bikes.
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02/25/2025 - 17:57
Beaches in southern California littered with timber, twisted metals, charred silt and urban runoff from Palisades fire
Los Angeles county beaches are contending with the aftermath of recent wildfires and winter storms as debris from the Palisades fire and urban runoff are carried to the shoreline.
After last week’s major rainstorm, beaches in southern California have been littered with timber, twisted metals, construction materials and charred silt and sediment originating from the Palisades fire in January. That blaze, along with the Eaton fire, killed at least 29 people.
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02/25/2025 - 12:23
A study shows birds worldwide make strategic decisions about how they live based on their environmental conditions. Some live fast, die young, and leave as many chicks as possible. Others live long and prosper by not breeding much.
